Daniel, G. Reginald 1949-

PERSONAL:

Born 1949. Education: Indiana University, B.A., 1971, M.A., 1973; University of California at Los Angeles, Ph.D., 1987.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Santa Barbara, CA. Office—Department of Sociology, 2834 Ellison Hall, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9430. E-mail—rdaniel@soc.ucsb.edu.

CAREER:

University of California, Santa Barbara, lecturer, 1992-98, assistant professor, 1998-2003, associate professor of sociology, 2003—, affiliated faculty member at Latin American and Iberian Studies Center, 1998—, Asian American Studies Department, 1998—, and Department of Black Studies, 2006—. Advisory board member, Project RACE, 1990-97.

MEMBER:

Pacific Sociological Association, National Association of Ethnic Studies, American Sociological Association, Association of MultiEthnic Americans (advisory board member), California Sociological Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Gulbenkian Foundation fellowship, 1971; Ford Foundation graduate study fellowship, 1973-80; Fulbright-Hays fellowship, 1977-78; UCLA Graduate Division academic fellowship, 1979-84; Mortar Board Senior Honor Society Faculty Excellence award, University of California at Los Angeles, 1993; Alpha Lambda Delta Mortar Board Professor of the Year award, University of California at Santa Barbara, 1998; Academic Senate general research grants, University of California at Santa Barbara, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004; Faculty Career Development award, University of California at Santa Barbara, 1999; ISBER Humanistic Social Science research grant, University of California at Santa Barbara, 2001; Regents Junior Faculty fellowship, 2001; K & F Baxter Family Foundation research grant, 2005.

WRITINGS:

More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order, Temple University Press (Philadelphia, PA), 2002.

(Editor, with Paul Spickard) Racial Thinking in the United States: Uncompleted Independence, University of Notre Dame Press (Notre Dame, IN), 2004.

Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States: Converging Paths?, Pennsylvania State University Press (University Park, PA), 2006.

Contributor of chapters to anthologies, including Racially Mixed People in America, edited by Maria P.P. Root, Sage Publications, 1992; The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier, edited by Maria P.P. Root, Sage Publications, 1996; Latin America: An Interdisciplinary Approach, edited by G. Verona-Lacey and J. Lopez-Arias, Peter Lang, 1998; Racial and Ethnic Relations in America, edited by Carl L. Bankston, Salem Press, 1999; We Are a People: Narrative and Multiplicity in Constructing Ethnic Identity, edited by P. Spickard and J. Burroughs, Temple University Press, 2000; African American Encyclopedia, revised edition, Marshall Cavendish, 2000; Kindred Visions—Ken Wilber and Other Leading Integral Thinkers, edited by K. Wilber, 2001; New Faces in a Changing America: Multiracial Identity in the 21st Century, edited by L. Winters and H. DeBose, Sage Publications, 2002; Race and Nation, Identity and Power: Ethnic Systems around the World, edited by P. Spickard, Routledge, 2004; Critical Globalization Studies, edited by R. Appelbaum and W. Robinson, Routledge, 2004; and Mixed Messages: Multiracial Identities in the Color-Blind Era, edited by D.L. Brunsma, Lynne Reinner Publishers, 2006. Contributor to periodicals, including Interrace Magazine, Journal of Intergroup Relations, Journal of the West, Spectrum, Contemporary Sociology, Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, and Unity and Difference: A Journal of Writers, Artists, and Students.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sociologist G. Reginald Daniel has written extensively on the subject of race and ethnicity. His book More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order was hailed by many critics as an important contribution to the field of multiracial identity, an area that, according to Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies contributor Ann Morning, has suffered from "a dearth of sophisticated analysis." Daniel argues that multiracial identity has emerged as a positive development that "deconstructs the Eurocentric dichotomy as well as the hierarchical valuation of blackness and whiteness as mutually exclusive and unequal." He explains that this mutually exclusive view of race, which was based on white supremacy, created a social order in which resistance had to be based on blacks' denial of their own blackness. Many multiracial individuals, as he shows, presented themselves as white—either temporarily or more permanently—in order to obtain better employment and living conditions. Many who could not or refused to "pass" created elitist societies to separate themselves from blacks. It was not until the late twentieth century that multiracial individuals began to embrace their identity as people of color. In Daniel's view, those who embrace this new multiracial identity see themselves as connected with several communities, rather than just one, and harbor the potential to effect social change in America.

In More Than Black? Daniel "pushes us to broaden our thinking about contemporary multiracial identity beyond demands for recognition and to understand it as part of an historical continuum of struggle with American racial stratification," stated Morning. Though Social Forces contributor Eduardo Bonilla-Silva found Daniel's use of data "not random" and his analysis "somewhat naive," the critic nevertheless described More Than Black? as a "sophisticated, historically complex, and theoretically driven analysis of multiracialism in the U.S." and a "tour de force … that will have to be reckoned with in years to come."

In Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States: Converging Paths? Daniel compares constructions of racial identity in the two countries. Peter Fry, writing in the Journal of Latin American Studies, observed that Daniel focuses particularly on recent developments, including rising sentiment against the "one-drop" rule in the United States, and the tendency, in Fry's words, for Brazil "to move away from its complex and situational ‘racial’ taxonomy to a bipolar system rather like that which the author would like to see the end of in the USA."

With Paul Spickard, Daniel also edited Racial Thinking in the United States: Uncompleted Independence, a collection of essays that, as the editors state, seeks to explore "the creation of racial ideas and systems in the United States in the context of slavery and colonialism and the subsequent revisions of those ideas and systems in later eras."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, June 1, 2005, review of Racial Thinking in the United States: Uncompleted Independence, p. 917.

Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History, October 1, 2007, Jerry Davila, review of Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States: Converging Paths?, p. 317.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, September 1, 2002, W.J. Nelson, review of More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order, p. 189.

Contemporary Sociology, November 1, 2005, "Talking Our Way out of a Racist Society," p. 608; Volume 36, number 6, November, 2007, Stanley Bailey, review of Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States, p. 535.

Ethnic and Racial Studies, January 1, 2003, review of More Than Black?, p. 185.

Journal of African American Men, Volume 6, number 2, spring, 2002, Lisa Harrison, review of More Than Black?, pp. 96-97.

Journal of American Ethnic History, Volume 27, number 1, fall, 2007, Ollie Johnson, review of Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States, pp. 80-81.

Journal of American History, December 1, 2005, Alex Lubin, review of Racial Thinking in the United States, p. 947.

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, September 1, 2003, Ann Morning, "Kerry Ann Rockquemore and David L. Brunsma, beyond Black: Biracial Identity in America," review of More Than Black?, p. 905.

Journal of Latin American Studies, August 1, 2007, Peter Fry, review of Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States, p. 689.

Journal of Southern History, November 1, 2005, Fay Yarbrough, review of Racial Thinking in the United States, p. 920.

Social Forces, December 1, 2002, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, review of More Than Black?, p. 674.

Times Literary Supplement, May 18, 2007, Edward Riedinger, review of Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States, p. 33.

ONLINE

Association of MultiEthnic Americans Web site,http://www.ameasite.org/ (January 24, 2008), profile of G. Reginald Daniel.

University of California—Santa Barbara Department of Sociology Web site,http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/ (January 24, 2008), G. Reginald Daniel faculty profile.